With my startling realization came the need to act, and I gave it my best shot. Pushing as much mana as I could gather into my body strengthening technique, I strained against the wall of sand.

I was just starting to make progress when the gale force winds suddenly ceased, and I shot forward like a rocket. I didn’t even have time to yell before I landed in the sand face-first.

Sitting up, I wiped my goggles clean and looked around. At least the sudden drop in the winds gave me a chance to assess the situation.

Things weren’t going great for us.

Demons lay scattered across the battlefield, most of them alive, but so battered that they were struggling to heal. While regeneration came naturally to demons, extreme levels of it did not. Only those who knew the relevant spells could regain their footing quickly.

Mia was doing much better.

The cat girl was on her feet, and if her glowing golden eyes were any indication, she was angry. She pressed closer to the golem faster than I could move, but she didn’t get very far before the thing acted again.

The lull must have allowed it to regather mana. Despite Glaustro’s repeated punches, it sent another wall of sand rocketing over the battlefield.

I barely managed to reach Mia in time and tackle her to the ground. The sand swarmed over us. It dealt damage, yes, but at least it didn’t blow us further away. We had to reach the golem before we could try anything.

Unfortunately, the closer we got to the construct, the stronger the sand became.

We had only managed to gain a few yards, but they made a difference. It was a struggle to get back on our feet, let alone push forward. I wasn’t sure how many more sprints we had in us. Even if my sword could hurt the thing, getting close enough to strike was starting to look impossible.

Didn’t mean we wouldn’t try, of course.

We were ready the next time a break came in the golem’s attack. As soon as the wind began to slacken, we forced our bodies up and started sprinting. By the time the sand curtain dropped, allowing us to see our position, we were a few yards closer.

I didn’t just focus on running, though. Instead, my eyes desperately scanned the body of the construct.

Golems like this were far beyond a mage of my level, so I didn’t have all the necessary background information. What I did know was that, even when they gained full sentience, they weren’t perfect.

An artificial creature like a golem does have many advantages over ‘born’ life forms. No leftover flaws from millennia of evolution. No limitations on energy reserves. No arbitrary lifespan to race against constantly.

On the other hand, their limitations are just as significant.

A golem, unless purposefully built for such a thing, doesn’t have the ability to grow and improve on its own. Even if a construct developed high intelligence, it could never invent unique spells or applications for mana. It would always be dependent on the enchantments placed on it by its creator.

Those enchantments governed everything about a golem, including its channeling of mana. Break the correct enchantments, and you could cripple the golem’s mana-related powers until it got repaired.

As for this construct’s amazing ability to manipulate sand? That came down to its enchantments, too. The only question was which runic set fueled that ability.

I focused my inspection on the thing’s arms first, simply because I was betting on the good old human-ish tendency to stick to the familiar. Golem needs to shoot an attack? Bind the enchantment to its arms, of course, because that’s where the mage would cast their spells from.

Unfortunately, while I could make out a ton of runes around the golem’s arms, they were all related to the whip attack. I couldn’t find a string or matrix that would enable the wide-ranging wall attack the thing was currently ravaging us with.

That’s when memories from the golem’s previous actions flashed across my mind.

It sounded like it was screaming before it first pulled off the sand-wall, so…

I didn’t fight the urge to smirk when my eyes landed on the golem’s ‘throat.’ Like a beautiful, complex collar, a whole string of runes wrapped around the neck several times, stretching down and ending in a core matrix just above the center of the golem’s chest. I wasn’t an expert, but I could still spot several references to ‘sand’, ‘control’, and ‘wave’ among the runes.

That’s my first target, then.

While I was busy sprinting and analyzing the runes, Glaustro was still hammering away as best he could.

The golem’s attack had ravaged his conjured form. This forced the demon to alternate between dealing further blows and scrambling to repair his own construct.

It was an impressive sight. His gigantic left arm delivered punch after punch to the golem’s center mass. His right arm transformed into a hatchet that he brought down in a rain of blows, aiming for his enemy’s joints. Yet all the while, boulders kept snapping out of the ground to fix the damage to his own construct body. It almost looked like they were melting into him, flowing over his stone form to fill in the gaps caused by the powerful sand.

His attack wasn’t entirely useless. Miniscule cracks were spreading over the golem, so Glaustro’s repeated strikes were doing something.

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Unfortunately, just like Glaustro, the golem seemed capable of drawing on its environment. Grains of sand rolled constantly over its rocky exterior, slipping into the cracks and sealing them over in seconds.

I had to throw myself to the ground again as the golem’s next ‘scream’ reached fever pitch. Mia hit the sand next to me. Then the sand-wall surged over us, turning the world into a haze of darkness, pain, and frustration.

This isn’t going to work. It just isn’t. The breaks are too short for us to advance fast enough, and this deluge is already pushing us away.

I tried my best to hold on, to anchor myself, but I still slid a few inches backwards. There just weren’t any convenient handholds available. Whatever Glaustro had done at the start of combat to stabilize the ground had dissipated. There was only sand under us now, and it definitely wasn’t working our favor.

If we tried to rush closer to the golem, we would be blown away by the next wall of sand, and then we would be even worse off than we were at the start.

Frustration threatened to boil over in my chest. I thought of all the stuff I could do if I was just stronger, wiser, with more training and spells under my belt. Even the spell Glaustro used to communicate with us when we first entered Lagyel would have been invaluable, because I could ask for his support.

But I can’t even…

My thoughts trailed off.

It was true that I didn’t know the spell he had used, but that didn’t mean I was without options if I wanted to communicate with him. Demons had the ability to sense the emotions of mortals. What better way to catch his attention than through that ability?

I had never tried to invoke my feelings on purpose before. In fact, I had worked hard to keep them tightly controlled, for fear of losing myself to madness.

Now, though? Now, I could only hope this vulnerability would become a strength.

I focused on my what I wanted, on the desperate hope that I could assist Glaustro, on the need for my harebrained scheme to work, on the frustration that filled me when I realized I wasn’t good enough even to make it to the golem. I gathered all of it, and then I tried to scream it to the world.

I floundered.

Rather than a psychic scream, I felt more like I was straining myself on a toilet. The lid I always kept over my emotions nowadays was still firmly in place.

That made anger bubble up. And this time, instead of pushing it down, I embraced it. I let it flood every inch of my being, then struggled to direct it towards something productive.

It was difficult. The need to thrash and scream and punch things like a toddler was overwhelming. Somehow, I managed to keep myself on track.

I need you, I need you, I need you… Please, help me!

The words were my mantra. I wrapped my very soul around my memories of Glaustro, both the good and the bad, and fused them with my ardent desire to get us all out of this mess.

With an instinctive twist of mana in my chest, the emotional tide came streaming out of me, like a high pressure valve had suddenly broken.

For a beat or two, nothing happened.

Then an outside force clamped me in its grip, prying my mind open with laughable ease.

“This better be good,” came the mental whisper of my commander. I could have wept. “Or I will make you regret distracting me.”

Well, he’s a little grumpy. That’s understandable.

I winced when I realized I didn’t know if he could hear idle thoughts. Come to think of it, I didn’t know if I could reply on purpose at all, but I gave it a good ol’ college try.

“I can hurt it. I can stop these attacks. I just need you to get me closer to it.”

A beat. Then: “Are you certain of this, soldier?”

“Yes.”

Definitely. Probably. Maybe?

It was a distinct possibility, but I carefully kept all my creeping doubt out of our mental dialogue.

If I didn’t do anything, we were dead. If I tried and we died, then I would just get punished later, which was probably better than lying here and waiting to get smashed or grated to death.

“Be ready.”

I didn’t know what he wanted me to be ready for, but I obeyed anyway. Instinctively, my hand snaked out over the sand, searching blindly until my fingers brushed against Mia’s arm. I traced it to her hand, and then I held onto her for dear life.

The moment came as soon as the sand-wave began to slacken again.

A massive fist of stone rose beneath us, lifting us up and closing around our bodies protectively. I thought he would slam us towards the golem, but instead, we soared through the air with blinding speed and crashed into the back of Glaustro’s construct.

The pain I expected never came. There was no impact. Like falling through the surface of the lake, the construct’s back swallowed us, and I had to fight hard not to panic.

I could feel the press of stone enveloping me on all sides, locking me into place, making it impossible to breathe. My mind swam, both from the lack of oxygen and my rising panic, but then I felt some force dragging us through the construct’s body. With a boom of rattling stone, I found myself getting pushed out.

That first gasp of air was the sweetest thing I ever tasted, however limited by the breather still attached to my face. The experience was only slightly soured by the fact that I was immediately dumped onto the golem’s chest.

Glaustro’s construct had abandoned its more humanoid appearance. It now looked like it was melting over the golem, locking parts of the enemy’s body in place. Already the thing’s ‘legs’ were mostly immobilized, and Glaustro had one of its arms trapped as well.

His massive stone fist was pressed against the golem’s chest, which was where I had been thrust out, along with Mia.

It was sheer preservation instinct that drove me onwards.

The golem was already starting to whine with the rising winds that would send out a new wave of sand. From that close, I could see the runes around its throat slowly lighting up as they filled with mana.

I scrambled further up the thing’s chest. My sword came up, and then I drove it down with both hands. It parted the stone with remarkable ease, slicing straight through several of the glowing runes.

I should have expected the result.

A thrum like a hiss escaped into the air, and then a whole section of the golem’s neck exploded.

I was launched backwards, my momentum only bleeding away when someone snatched me out of the air and spun me around. I caught a hint of Mia’s ears and tail, then I was pushed back onto my feet. I stumbled, but kept my footing, managing to dive straight down and stab the golem a second time.

I dashed around, striking again and again, dealing as much damage to the golem’s runes as I could. Each blow caused an explosion, but Mia followed me around, catching me before I could get blown away.

Rune after rune was savaged, and the effects were showing. Slowly, the construct’s whine grew discordant, then petered out entirely.

It was still fighting in Glaustro’s grasp. Sand was trying to climb up its form and fill in the cracks, but it couldn’t move fast enough. Finally, when I drove my sword into a particularly complex rune matrix, the creeping sand stopped as well.

A whoosh of wind streamed past me from the sheer amount of mana leaking out of the golem, but when that stopped, the construct was no longer trying to throw off Glaustro’s massive stone form. It stood there, completely still, a lifeless hunk of rock.

I practically collapsed as relief and exhaustion caught up with me.

We did it. Somehow, we did it.

My ears were ringing. My eyes were blurry. I could have passed out then and there.

I would have, if the piercing sound of a horn didn’t rip through the air in that moment.

My head snapped up, my eyes fixed on the distant city. Already, a cloud of fliers was forming above the massive treetop manor.

The city’s forces were coming for us.

And we had barely managed to kill one golem.